'One Battle After Another' review: DiCaprio anchors Paul Thomas Anderson's political epic of a generation

Courtesy of Warner Bros.

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Paul Thomas Anderson, the mad man that you are. Here we have a writer-director responsible for some of the most iconic and critically lauded films of our time, from “Boogie Nights” to “There Will Be Blood,” finally cashing in the blank check he’s long deserved. The result is “One Battle After Another,” a massive studio picture shot on IMAX cameras, made with a scale and scope that original movies almost never get anymore.

This is Anderson at his boldest: a blistering political thriller that accurately captures the paranoia and dread of our modern hellscape on a staggering $130 million budget. How Anderson, whose biggest global grosser to date topped out around $75 million, convinced Warner Bros. to fund a film that isn’t based on IP and doesn’t feature an ounce of spandex is a mystery. Instead, the superhero this time is Leonardo DiCaprio playing the role he was always (?) born to play: a washed-up revolutionary who loves to smoke pot and watch “The Battle of Algiers.” 

Loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland” (Anderson reportedly asked Pynchon if he could cherry-pick elements for the film, and the author agreed), “One Battle After Another” is, at its core, a story about a father and daughter navigating our fraught political landscape. DiCaprio sheds all traces of leading-man charisma. This isn’t “The Great Gatsby.” He is a depressed, alcoholic named Bob Ferguson, who spends most of the movie in a beanie and tattered bathrobe, screaming into the phone because he can’t remember the code words from his radical past.

That past life has forced Bob into witness protection in Colorado, where he lives with his daughter Willa (a breakout turn from Chase Infiniti). In a propulsive prologue, we learn that Bob and Willa’s mother, Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), once carried out elaborate attacks against U.S. institutions, including immigration detention centers. These themes will polarize certain viewers, but Anderson never pauses to lecture. The political undertones are there, but what elevates the film is the tenderness of its father-daughter story. The result is both Anderson’s saddest and funniest works to date. It also feels strikingly modern, despite being one of the rare contemporary-set films he’s made. True to his form, PTA even finds a plausible method of stripping cell phones out of the narrative.

Sixteen years later, Bob’s quiet life unravels when a foe from his past resurfaces: Captain Steven J. Lockjaw, played by a shredded Sean Penn in his most magnetic role in over a decade. Lockjaw runs a migrant detention center and is hellbent on finding Bob and Willa. Penn hasn’t been this beefed-up in quite some time, bringing a wild, maniac presence that’s weird in all the right ways. His mission kicks off the film’s second act, a taut game of pursuit that builds to a jaw-dropping three-way highway chase. Shot on old-school VistaVision by cinematographer Michael Bauman, the sequence pulsates with energy and goes full pedal to the metal on IMAX.  

For all the tension, it is refreshing how hysterical the movie is. Benicio Del Toro nearly steals the show as a dojo sensei who guides Bob through some ill-advised schemes involving rooftop parkour and taser-happy cops. DiCaprio, forever stumbling into disasters of his own making, becomes the butt of some of the film’s biggest laughs. There’s longtime PTA collaborator Johnny Greenwood’s electrifying score, and some well timed needle drops to keep things energized. 

“One Battle After Another” is a rare thing: a new American classic that shows an auteur operating at the highest level, with resources usually reserved for branded blockbusters. If it were my $130 million on the line, I’m not sure I’d risk it on such a politically charged project. But as a viewer, I’m grateful someone did. This is why we go to the movies. Box office be damned.

Grade: A 

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER opens in theaters Friday, September 26th.